Google Fiber’s biggest enemy may be movie studios

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If you ask cable companies, the internet speeds we have in major cities are more than enough. While it may be enough for browsing Facebook and watching the occasional YouTube video, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that greater capacity will open doors to new kinds of usage and new kinds of technology. Google Fiber has been trying from day one to demonstrate what is possible with a faster connection, and in doing so they have found a new group that is actively against giving people more internet than they know what to do with. That group is the movie studios, and as usual, their reasons for disliking something boil down to the potential for increased piracy.

There’s not one answer for why people pirate things, but one of the main reasons is because it’s easy. If someone hands you a one-click method to grab whatever content you want online for free, and tells you that it’ll only take a few minutes, there’s a good chance more than a few people will take you up on that offer. Warner Bros. and Sony Pictures Entertainment have been conducting surveys in areas where Google Fiber has been deployed, and created a presentation based on the results. In the presentation, which was leaked to the folks at TorrentFreak, it is abundantly clear that the movie studios believe that the increased bandwidth and low price of Google Fiber will encourage 26% of people who claim to have never pirated anything before to pirate a movie.

It’s worth pointing out that the same presentation includes evidence that over 30% of those polled plan to purchase more digital content and stream more of everything when provided with a faster connection, but the real focus for Hollywood is the piracy. Remember, the MPAA has a formula that places value on every illegal download and stream, and they remain convinced that all of that is lost revenue. With more information like this, it’s likely we’ll see an increase in attempts to slow services like Google Fiber from covering the US in faster internet until an acceptable piracy prevention tool is in place.